April Kids Corner - Spring Activities
from the Gale River Cooperative Preschool
GeTTING to know the amazing earthworm!
During April, it feels like the world is waking up. Plants go from bare and brown to lush and green. If you garden, you’re probably getting your seeds and beds ready for the growing season. While you do that, another creature is also helping get things ready, earthworms!
During the winter, the earthworms burrow down further into the earth, as far as six feet deep, to escape the frozen ground. There, they curl up and cover themselves with insulating slime and hibernate. As the earth heats up and rain trickles down, they move back toward the surface to get to work eating and tunneling.
Did you know?
Earthworms are actually not native to North America. It’s hypothesized that they were present prior to the last ice age but were killed off during that extreme freezing. When Europeans arrived, they brought earthworms with them and they rapidly spread through the Americas.
Earthworms eat decaying plant matter and other organisms but also consume soil and sand in the process. They eat as they tunnel through the earth, then poop out worm castings which are fantastic fertilizer. It’s been estimated that worms eat and poop out their own weight in food and soil each day!
As they eat and tunnel, they’re also aerating the soil and creating pathways for water to move deeper. This in turn helps plants grow because it makes it easier for their roots to move deeper and suck up water. Worms provide this ecosystem service for free and are generally considered beneficial to soil health. The exception is in ecosystems such as the boreal forest, which relies on slow decomposition. The boreal environment, because of its slow decomposition, stores more carbon. As worms make their way through it, they change the structure of the soil by speeding up decomposition. This actually releases more carbon which isn’t what we want.
Earthworms also have interesting bodies. They can’t see or hear, but they can sense changes in light and vibrations in the earth. Their bodies are made up of ring-like segments including a large bulging section called the clitellum. This is where the worms make a cocoon into which their eggs go. Some of their organs are duplicated on each side, leading to the popular myth that if you cut a worm in half it will become two worms. This however isn’t true, and they do have a head and a tail. The tail is the blunter of the two ends. As you start digging into the warming soil this spring, take a look for wiggling worms. You can hold them, feel them, but be sure to let them go. They are happiest in the soil where they belong!
Want tips on how to explore earthworms this April? Head outside with the ideas below!
Worms are often hiding underground where they have food and moisture, but on particularly rainy days they will often come out of the flooded earth onto the surface. This is a great time to observe worms without having to dig for them. You could draw pictures of them, measure them, and note where they are as methods of observation.
One fun way to study worms is to make a vermiculture box. Vermiculture means the cultivation of earthworms. This is a great way to convert your kitchen scraps into soil for your lawn or garden and reduce waste! There are lots of different methods or premade containers online, but if you want to go the homemade route, choose a bin that’s not metal and that you can drill holes in for ventilation. Drill holes in the lids and around the top. Line the bin with damp shredded newspaper and add soil, food scraps, leaf litter, etc. Then add your worms. For this project, red worms you can purchase online are better than the ones you’ll find in the garden. Keep the bin moist and add food scraps. You should see the volume decrease as the worms eat the food you provide!
Interested in earthworm activities and crafts? We’ve got you covered!
The way worms move is fun to replicate! You can have your children try to move along the ground without using their hands or feet, inching along or wiggling to move. THis is great for core strength. Worms will also wiggle onto their bellies if on their backs so you can do that move too. You can also use yarn or spaghetti to drag in paint and paint wiggly worm lines!
Since worms are simple in shape they’re easily adaptable to crafts. Have your children bead a pattern onto a pipe cleaner “earthworm” to practice early numeracy and wiggle it into a fun shape. You can also measure your worms to see which is longer or shorter using cubes or a ruler.
Go find spring! Try this at home!
Photo Credit: Kelsey Sullivan/Gale River Cooperative Pre-School
Get outside and enjoy the warmer temperatures by exploring the many signs of spring. Click here to find a scavenger hunt that you can do as a family!
What about bugs!?!
About this time every year, we may start to find ticks in our yards or in the woods. A few great ways to prevent tick bites are:
1. Wear light-colored clothing, long-sleeved.
2. Wear some kind of tick repellant.
3. Check for ticks!
This can be done every night before bed or in the bath. Ideally, you can make this a routine, like putting on sunscreen, and then you can always feel safe!
April Showers Bring May Flowers
A rainbow crosses over Rte. 302 towards Crawford Notch.
The expression “April showers bring May flowers” has proved relevant for the first part of April. Weather can be calm and peaceful or scary and destructive. Particularly in the mountains, weather is often windier, wetter, and colder than the valleys below. Wind is caused by changing pressure. Think about a large group of people put into a room. If a lot of them are in one corner, they’d probably move to a more open spot that’s less crowded. This is what air does! It moves from an area of high pressure (more people) to low pressure (less people). It’s generally windier in the mountains because the air is getting squeezed into a smaller space. It’s like putting your thumb over a garden hose. The water speeds up to get through the smaller space. Clouds and rain are also related to pressure. Air that is warm, or higher in pressure can hold a lot of water in it as clouds. Air that is colder, or is lower in pressure, isn’t able to hold as much water. This is the case in the mountains. The water isn’t able to stay as a cloud and instead begins to fall back to earth as rain quicker than if it were in the warmer valley. It’s important to remember this if you are planning on taking a trip outdoors. The weather at your house could be a lot nicer than the weather on the mountains so always be prepared with rain gear and warm layers.
Interested in weather activities and crafts? We’ve got you covered!
Spend some time watching clouds and keep a cloud journal. The kinds of clouds we see in the sky are a good indicator of what kind of weather we’re going to have. If there are white, puffy, cumulus clouds, we’re in for fair weather! If you see a dark, anvil shaped tall cloud (cumulonuimbus), be ready for a thunderstorm. Draw the clouds you see and think about if they look like anything.
Explore the world while it’s raining! Although it is more convenient to play outside while it’s sunny and dry, the world changes during rain events. Get suited up and go exploring. Do you see or hear as many animals? How does the ground feel? Can you find a spot in the forest that is dry-ish? Is the water pooling or turning into a river?
Create a cloud in a bottle! This is a simple experiment that helps kids visualize the impact of high pressure and low pressure on water vapor. Use a plastic bottle and fill it half way with water. Light a match, drop it in, and cap the bottle. This will change the pressure. Shake the bottle to saturate the air with moisture. The sides of the bottle should look misty. Squeeze the bottle, and voila! The misty “cloud” disappears. The higher pressure environment is able to absorb the water vapor.
Build sailboats. We use wind for power, and what better example is there than a sailboat? Have your child construct a boat from miscellaneous materials such as popsicle sticks, bark, bottles cut in half, etc. You might want to add a keel to balance it. Then build a sail of some kind. It could be made out of paper, tissue paper, or cloth. Use a fan to create wind and see if the boat moves across water.
Thanks to our partner, the Gale River Cooperative Preschool in Bethlehem, for helping our area parents get kiddos outside for fun no matter the time of year.
We can't wait to share the family fun we're planning with you. Keep an eye out in the coming months for announcements.
